{"id":113686,"date":"2022-07-27T05:22:13","date_gmt":"2022-07-27T11:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=113686"},"modified":"2022-07-27T10:27:28","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T16:27:28","slug":"an-image-request-ill-remember","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/27\/an-image-request-ill-remember\/","title":{"rendered":"An Image Request I’ll Remember"},"content":{"rendered":"

I get image requests, lots of image requests, but this one is special.<\/p>\n

In mid-May of this year I received a request for use of one of my Barn Owl photos from someone named “Eric Chivian M.D.”, who modestly described himself as “a former Harvard Medical School professor” and left it at that.<\/p>\n

It turns out that Eric was being modest indeed. His list of highly impressive accomplishments is jaw-droppingly diverse and extensive, including the fact that he’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his campaign against nuclear weapons, he was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and he’s a leading proponent of efforts to create a greater awareness amongst policy makers and the public of the importance of biodiversity to human health. Eric of course didn’t tell me any of that stuff. I had to dig it all up on my own and what I’ve mentioned is only the tip of the iceberg. If you want to see the whole shebang, check this out<\/a><\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n

In a series of communications over four weeks we developed an unexpected friendship as we discussed things as diverse as my medical situation after back surgery (he suggested a particular “contraption” his wife used after neck surgery that allowed her to read comfortably), his reading recommendations for me as I recovered (including “D\u2019Arcy Thompson\u2019s On Growth and Form – get the Cambridge Canto edition with John Bonner as editor. One of the greatest biology books of all time.”) and the soft spot I have for Harvard because my grandfather x 10, Governor Thomas Dudley<\/span><\/span><\/a>, was one of Harvard’s founders and in 1650 signed its original charter.<\/p>\n

When he learned I was fascinated by my family history he also made some suggestions about folks I might want to investigate as possible shirt-tail relatives of mine, including essayist, novelist and friend of Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner and Sarah Whitehead Dudley, who married George Plimpton.<\/p>\n

But after telling you all this, it wasn’t his accomplishments that made his request so special for me. Instead, it was his intended use of my image.<\/p>\n

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This photo of a Barn Owl in flight is the image I agreed to allow Eric to use in a booklet titled “How Sustainable Engineering Solutions Depend on Biodervisity” that he and his colleagues were preparing for an upcoming United Nations meeting. When he told me the booklet would be “making the argument that we must preserve the living world or we will lose critically important sustainable engineering designs that we can\u2019t afford to lose” I was all in.<\/p>\n

My Barn Owl photo was used in the context of modeling wind turbine blades after owl feathers that produce silent flight, resulting in much quieter wind turbines and reducing objections to them because of the noise and air vibrations they typically produce.<\/p>\n

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Eric Chivian speaking to UN General Assembly on 7\/19\/22, holding up ‘the booklet”. Image used by permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

So a week ago yesterday, on July 19th, Eric spoke before a special meeting of the United Nations General Assembly called “A Moment for Nature” on the importance of biodiversity to engineering solutions that might sustain us in our increasingly threatened world. Copies of “the booklet” were presented to the delegations from each member state and various other UN officials.<\/p>\n

If you’re interested, here’s a link to a PDF of the actual booklet<\/a><\/span><\/span>, including my photo in the ‘chapter’ called “Owls and Silent Wind Turbines”.<\/p>\n

It’s hard for me to imagine a use of one of my images that I’d be prouder of.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n